I was reading the below article in the New York Times, how Spain is celebrating Picasso this year. Then I saw this and wish I was back in Madrid for a day!

Bill

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June 25, 2006
Heads Up
Spain Gives Picasso a Homecoming He Never Had
By ANDREW FERREN

FANS of Picasso stand to gain a lot of frequent-flier miles this year traveling to and from Spain, where many of the artist's greatest works can be encountered in the coming months. Across the country, nearly a dozen exhibitions and events have been organized to commemorate an astonishingly serendipitous overlap of Picasso-related anniversaries — from that of his birth 125 years ago to the 25th anniversary of the arrival of "Guernica," perhaps his greatest masterpiece, in a democratic Spain as stipulated in the artist's will. Elsewhere in Europe, it might be the year of Mozart and Rembrandt, but in Spain 2006 will be remembered as the year that Picasso, who never returned to his native country after the Spanish Civil War, finally came home.

"Spain is doing its native son proud this year," said Robert Rosenblum, a professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and a Picasso scholar. A blockbuster exhibition has just opened at Spain's two most important national museums — the Prado and Reina Sofía — in Madrid, and smaller shows in Málaga and Barcelona are rounding out the picture.

"Although his long-term expatriate residency in France has often put him in the realm of French national heroes," Professor Rosenblum said, "Picasso always asserted his Spanishness in his work, either stealthily with yellow-and-red color schemes reminiscent of the Spanish flag or overtly, as in his variations on Velázquez's 'Las Meninas,' and I suspect the Prado show will confirm this essential lineage."

Some 6,000 visitors stood in line on the opening day this month of the two-venue Madrid exhibition, "Picasso: Tradition and Avant-Garde," on view until Sept. 3. One local paper even ran a map of both museums detailing exactly which Picassos are in which galleries.

At the Museo Nacional del Prado (Paseo del Prado, 34-91-330-2800; www.museoprado.es ; admission 6 euros, or about $7.75 at $1.29 to the euro), groundbreaking works by Picasso like "The Three Musicians" and "La Vie," which have arrived in Spain for the first time, are being shown next to the likes of Velázquez, El Greco, Goya and other Spanish artists who inspired Picasso.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Republican government proclaimed Picasso director of the museum. He was then living in France and his modernist sensibility was anathema to Francisco Franco, the Nationalist general. Picasso never assumed the post, but on the 70th anniversary of his appointment, he has taken the museum over with nearly 40 of his most important works, which line the central gallery. For the first time, Picasso's riffs on "Las Meninas" by Velázquez can be seen in the company of the 17th-century original.

The dialogue between Picasso and the Old Masters continues at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Santa Isabel 52; 34-91-467-5062; www.museoreinasofia.es ; 6 euros), the national showcase for modern art. Here, "Guernica" now shares gallery space with Goya's "Third of May, 1808," on loan from the Prado. Created for the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris, "Guernica," more than 26 feet wide, was Picasso's response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, by German aircraft supporting Franco's Nationalist army. The comparison with "Third of May, 1808," which depicts Napoleonic forces firing point blank on Spanish civilians, is poignant. "This was the painting Picasso most wanted to rival and reincarnate when he created 'Guernica,' " Professor Rosenblum said.

Like its creator, "Guernica" never entered Franco's Spain, though Picasso, who died in 1973, stipulated that the work be given to Spain once democracy had been restored. That came about after Franco's death in 1975, and today the painting is as much a symbol of Spain's transition to democracy as it is to the events of 1937. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of its arrival in 1981, the Reina Sofía has lined up other key works, like Manet's "The Execution of Maximilian" and Picasso's later "Massacre in Korea"; both also resonate with the cold brutality of war.

But Picasso's legacy is not limited to the Spanish capital. About 50 miles north of Madrid is Buitrago del Lozoya, whose most famous son is probably Eugenio Arias, another Spanish exile in France who became Picasso's barber. In 40 years of friendship, Picasso gave him many works, including ceramics, drawings and posters showing themes of their common heritage — bulls and bullfights are prominent. Mr. Arias gave the works to his hometown, which created the Museo Picasso: Colección Eugenio Arias (Plaza de Picasso 1; 34-91-868-0056; www.madrid.org/museo_picasso ; free).

Picasso was born in the Mediterranean city of Málaga in 1881 and appropriately, the Museo Picasso Málaga (San Augustín 8; 34-95-212-7600; www.mpicassom.org ; admission 8 euros) was the first institution to celebrate his 125th birthday. Its yearlong tribute includes "Picasso: Muses and Models," a look at his fascination with the female form, from Oct. 26 through Feb. 28.

Málaga itself could function as a Picasso museum because the city remains very much as it did in his youth, when he would accompany his father, a painter and drawing instructor, to bullfights at the Malagueta Bullring. That and other landmarks, like the house on the Plaza de la Merced where Picasso was born and which is now a small museum, make up Málaga's Ruta Picassiana ( www.malagaturismo.com ).

In 1891, the family moved to La Coruña on Spain's northern Atlantic coast, and while the city does not have a Picasso museum or even any works by the artist, it has its own route, which includes the apartment where the family lived, and will be organizing events for the artist's birthday on Oct. 25.

IT was in Barcelona, where he moved with his family in 1895, that Picasso first ran into anything approaching the avant-garde. In the late 19th century, prosperous Barcelona was economically and culturally linked to the rest of Europe, especially Paris. Barcelona "opened a window for Picasso to see what was possible in the world of art," said Maria Teresa Ocaña, the director of the Museu Picasso Barcelona.

Though Picasso would soon establish himself in Paris, he returned to Barcelona for family visits and summer vacations until the outbreak of the civil war. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of a summer he spent in the mountain village of Gósol, where, influenced by Iberian and African art, his work experienced a radical shift that got full expression in "Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon," painted a year later.

Given such links to the city, the local government is collaborating with the Picasso museum and, under the title "PICASSO2006BCN," they have organized exhibitions, concerts, symposiums and ballet performances at the city's Liceu opera house (La Rambla 51-59; 34-93-485-9998; ( www.liceubarcelona.com ) on Oct. 22 and 23, of "Parade," "Icarus" and "The Three Cornered Hat," recreating costumes and sets designed by Picasso in 1919.

Given that he lived there as an adult, Barcelona's Picasso route is perhaps the most fun. A new guidebook spells out all the stops, including Els Quatre Gats (Carrer de Montsió 3; 34-93-302-4140), the tavern where Picasso hung out with the city's avant-garde. Today it hangs reproductions of many of the works that adorned its walls during Picasso's early career.

On July 4, the Museu Picasso Barcelona (Montcada 15-23; 34-93-319-6310; www.museupicasso.bcn.es ; 8 euros) is exhibiting works that Picasso created for what is now the Musée Picasso in Antibes, France. The centerpiece is "La Joie de Vivre," made in 1946 (yet another anniversary), almost 10 years after "Guernica." On a canvas of similar horizontal format, Picasso shows his youthful companion, Françoise Gilot, dancing jubilantly in a seaside landscape, reminding us that peace eventually returned to both the artist and to Spain.